On the last full day of the visit we finally had some real work to do. The event was set to open at 13 and we arrived in good time to set up our equipment. The things we still had left was a wooden mockup of the experiment, a SCALE system prototype, two actual circuit boards for the SCALE probes, a whole bunch of stickers, and two posters.

We were expecting mostly teenagers, but it turned out most visitors were families with children and we didn’t get far with our English. I tried to talk a bit in German, but I’m not very good and sometimes the German REXUS teams at the same table had to help out. We also made a last minute decision to have the presentation talk translated, and Juergen did a great job with it.

Still though, the SQUID stickers turned out to be really popular and there were a lot of visitors, probably several hundred. The biggest crowd magnet was probably the rocket buildling workshop (with model rocket engines!) and the planitarium show.

At 18 the crowds were starting to thin out and it was time to pack up. We headed to the Sky Bar near the train station, where one had a great view over the town. Beer was consumed and Facebook friends added. There was one more stop that night, at a mexican-styled restaurant that served huge and cheap drinks (Germany is amazing!), before heading to bed for an early flight the next day. Juergen and Tina were great hosts and we are really happy that we were invited to this great event.

The trip home actually went according to plan, so there’s not much to write about there. I discovered an awesome Sv. Michelsen’s chocolate shop at the Copenhagen airport and stocked up on chocolate with my name on it though.

Today we took a bit of a break from the space-related work and took a trip into town, with our target set on the new Mercedes-Benz museum. It’s on the other side of town from Vaihingen where we’re staying, but the S-bahn took us there in just 20 minutes.

The museum was extremely impressive, both from the outside and inside. Three elevators carry visitors up to the top of the central concourse, and the trail then goes down in a spiral, starting with the humble beginnings of the first Daimler and Benz cars and ending with the latest luxurious supercars and a massive display of the legendary Silver Arrow race cars. I won’t say much more and let the images speak for themselves.

We stayed over three hours, there was just so much to see. Once we did get back to town we had some food (strange german sausage-pastries) and checked out some stores, before heading to the observatory. Most of the preparations for Yuri’s Night had already been done though, and we were treated a rather strange laser show in the planetarium, a mashup of mummies, dinosaurs, and astronauts.

Last but certainly not least we headed to the train station tower from which we could see much of central town, and then to a traditional german pub which served the most amazing dinner. We did not stay very late though, as we had a job to do the next day…